Getting Away with Murder

Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP, condemned the killing and the killers, calling the murder another example of white supremacist violence in the South. Civil rights supporters wrote to the governor of Mississippi demanding vigorous prosecution in the case, and the mayor of Chicago called on federal officials to join the investigation. Mrs. Mamie Till Bradley told reporters in Chicago that she was going to seek legal assistance to support the prosecution of the killers and that “Mississippi is going to pay for this.” Southern newspapers reported only the latter part of her statement, making it look like Emmett’s mother blamed the entire state of Mississippi for her son’s murder. In a television interview just before the trial, Mrs. Bradley also demanded support from President Eisenhower: “It’s my opinion that the guilt begins with Mrs. Bryant, and I want to see Mrs. Bryant, her husband, and any other persons that were in on this thing. And I feel like the pressure should start with the president of the United States and be channeled all the way down to the township of Money, Mississippi.”

In Mississippi, Sheriffs Smith and Strider received letters and phone calls threatening them and Bryant and Milam; as a precaution, Smith called on National Guard troops to patrol the Leflore County jail. Strider reported rumors that thousands of Blacks were on their way to Mississippi to “tear up the jail and take the two men,” but the threats didn’t worry the Southern sheriff. He told The Greenwood Commonwealth, “These folks seem to think they are coming down here to take over—I don’t think they are.”

Robert Patterson, founder of the White Citizens’ Council, said the Emmett Till murder couldn’t be blamed on the Councils or any other segregationist group. “One of the primary reasons for our organization,” he said, “is to prevent acts of violence. We are doing our best in spite of constant agitation and inflammatory statements from the NAACP and outside agitators.” Defending his state against these outside agitators, Mississippi’s governor, Hugh White, sent a telegram to the NAACP with this message: “Parties charged with the murder are in jail. I have every reason to believe that the court will do their duty in prosecution. Mississippi does not condone such conduct.”

Before the widespread condemnation of Mississippi, local authorities looked forward to prosecuting the two brothers for Emmett’s murder, and the sheriffs’ offices in Leflore and Tallahatchie counties had been gathering evidence for the prosecution. Despite the state’s violent racist culture, the vicious murder horrified many white residents, and they supported a conviction of Bryant and Milam. Neither of the killers was well liked in the community, and many people felt the brothers had overstepped their “white” authority in kidnapping and killing the boy. Initial public reaction in the Delta was so negative that no lawyer in the county would agree to defend the two men.

But the deluge of phone calls, letters, and telegrams from “outside agitators” and the loud criticism from Northern media put the local Mississippians, already on edge because of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, on the defensive. The hostile reaction against Mississippi convinced many white citizens that Southern culture was in danger, and they were determined to preserve their way of life at all costs. So, even though most white residents loathed siding with two unpopular “rednecks,” on the weekend of September 3, 1955, public opinion in Leflore and Tallahatchie counties turned in favor of Bryant and Milam.

Sheriff Strider began a public defense of the killers when he announced to the press that he thought the body found in the Tallahatchie was much too old to be Emmett Till’s and suggested that the boy was still alive. Strider later admitted privately, “The last thing I wanted to do was to defend those peckerwoods. But I just had no choice about it.” That same weekend other county leaders also had a change of heart, and all five lawyers in the town of Sumner—J. J. Breland, C. Sidney Carlton, Harvey Henderson, J. W. Kellum, and John Whitten—agreed to take Bryant and Milam’s case. Breland defended their decision by explaining that the lawyers felt the local murder case had turned into a media event pitting Mississippi and its way of life against outside agitators bent on destroying the South. He said they all felt intense pressure to “let the North know that we are not going to put up with Northern negroes ‘stepping over the line.’”

An article in The Greenwood Commonwealth reported a similar response among the white residents of Leflore and Tallahatchie counties:

“The attitude of Sumner citizens seemed to be that the indictments were expected, but citizens also resented charges and influence of outside organizations, especially the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

During a break in the trial, J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant talk with their mother. At right is Carolyn Bryant.

“Vernon Brett, Sumner wholesale groceryman, said ‘justice should be done, but we resent the outside interference from northern negroes who don’t know the facts.’

“C. Sidney Carlton, a defense attorney for Bryant and Milam, said, ‘the people of this area all regret that this awful thing happened. We don’t condone such actions, but the people here are not convinced that the boys (Bryant and Milam) killed the negro boy.’”

In the Delta Democrat- Times, editor Hodding Carter wrote that he believed that some groups outside Mississippi were using the Till case as an opportunity to make the state look bad. In an editorial published before the trial, he warned that the intense negative reactions from groups in the North might make it impossible for any white juror to issue a fair and honest decision.

“[Northern agitators] could make the prospective Mississippi jurors so angry at these blanket indictments of our white society that it would seem a confirmation to convict any member of it, no matter how anti-social he or she might be. Then the purpose would have been accomplished and Mississippi could go down in further ignominy as a snakepit where justice cannot prevail for each race alike.”

As a lifelong Southerner, Carter anticipated the reaction of the jury members to the pressures from the North and the South and lamented the inevitable fallout that would come if the murder trial weren’t run honestly. “If the courts in Mississippi are unable to accomplish justice in this matter,” he said, “we will deserve the criticism we get.”

The defense lawyers weren’t worried about Northern criticism; they simply wanted their clients declared innocent. A victory in this case, they assumed, would be more than enough to silence the rabble-rousers from the North. And victory was assured even before the trial began because Bryant and Milam’s attorneys knew they could rely on the racist beliefs of their fellow white citizens to win an acquittal in the case. The defense team simply had to provide the jury members with an easy out, a legal reason to declare the killers innocent of the murder charges and still save face in their community.

Lead defense attorney J. J. Breland went public with the defense’s strategy, and by doing so made available to all potential jurors a way for them to vote against a conviction of Bryant and Milam: “The way I see it,” Breland told The Greenwood Commonwealth, “the state has got to prove three things: 1. That the boy was murdered. 2. That it happened in the second judicial district of Tallahatchie County. 3. That Bryant and Milam did it. It’s all circumstantial, which is okay when you’re returning an indictment but quite different when you’ve got to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Then Breland did some public relations work to rebuild the image of the two “peckerwoods” he had agreed to defend. He said that he’d known his clients for several years, and that they were “men of good reputation, respected businessmen in the community, what I’d call real patriots, 100 percent Americans.”

The pretrial publicity from Breland and Sheriff Strider and the increasingly hostile attacks from Northern and liberal media would send members of the jury into the trial with their minds made up. Like most Mississippi whites, they already believed they had to defend Southern society against “radicals” and “agitators” determined to force integration on their state. If jurors needed further reasons to acquit Bryant and Milam, they only had to recall Breland’s preview of the defense’s trial strategy, his certification of Bryant and Milam as “patriots,” and Sheriff Strider’s rumor that Emmett Till was still alive. That would give any white who served on the jury enough “evidence” to render a decision that would defend the South.

To its credit, the state did what it could to set up a fair trial by appointing one of Mississippi’s leading prosecutors, District Attorney Gerald Chatham, to handle the trial, and by assigning Mississippi Assistant Attorney General Robert B. Smith, a former FBI agent, to assist Chatham in the case. The governor also assigned two additional attorneys and two Highway Patrol inspectors to help in the investigation. Circuit Judge Curtis M. Swango, widely respected for his fairness, presided at the trial that, by his order, would begin on Monday, September 19.

The site of the famous trial was the Tallahatchie County courthouse, a sturdy pre-World War I stone building that occupied the center of the town square of Sumner, Mississippi, population 550. On the morning of September 19, throngs of people, Black and white, Northerner and Southerner, jammed the square, waiting for the trial to begin. More than seventy photographers and newspaper, radio, and television reporters from all over the United States were among the crowd.

Sheriff Strider reminded Northern reporters that the courtroom was segregated, just like every other public building in the state. “We’ve kept the races separated for a long time,” he said, “and we don’t intend to change now.” When the county building opened its doors for the trial, more than 250 whites were allowed to file upstairs to the second-floor courtroom. After the whites had their seats, deputies let about fifty Black spectators enter and sit in the back of the court, and despite the protests of Sheriff Strider, Judge Swango permitted eight Black reporters to be seated at a card table set up in the rear of the courtroom. In the front of the courtroom facing the judge’s stand, Bryant and Milam sat at a table with their lawyers. The defendants’ wives and mother sat behind them. Each defendant had two young sons, and the four little boys split time between their mothers’ laps and their fathers‘.

By the time the trial began, about 350 spectators were crammed into the courtroom designed for only 280 people, and an overflow crowd of nearly 1,000 waited outside on the courthouse lawn to receive regular updates on the trial.

Despite the seriousness of the event and the heat and humidity of a late summer Delta heat wave, the courtroom buzzed with excitement. Ruby Hurley, an NAACP worker who attended the trial, recalled the scene: “It was just like a circus. The defendants were sitting up there eating ice-cream cones and playing with their children in court just like they were out at a picnic. Everybody was searched going into the courtroom to make sure none of the Negroes carried weapons.“ Even though deputies had searched most people who attended the trial, many of the Black spectators worried about becoming targets of violence from resentful whites. Some of the Black journalists had even worked out an escape plan they could use if gunfire broke out.

The courtroom atmosphere and the unfair treatment of Blacks in the audience foreshadowed a number of departures from standard legal practice that would occur during the weeklong trial in Sumner, Mississippi. The procedural inconsistencies, however, would have no effect on the trial’s outcome; according to nearly everyone involved in the case, even before the trial began, no one in Sumner doubted that Bryant and Milam would be declared innocent.

Judge Swango called the court to order and directed the lawyers on both sides to begin interviewing prospective jurors. Hoping to prevent jury candidates from excusing themselves because of a reluctance to use capital punishment, prosecuting attorney Chatham startled everyone in the room when he announced that the state would not seek the death penalty. “A substantial part of the state’s evidence is circumstantial evidence,” he said. “This case has received wide publicity. The state is going to take every precaution to see that we have a fair and impartial jury.” His surprising announcement drew such a stir from the audience that Judge Swango had to bang his gavel repeatedly to restore order.

Even in jury selection, Chatham faced an uphill battle. Mississippi state law required that only registered male voters who were at least twenty-one years old and could read and write were eligible for jury duty. Even though 63 percent of the residents of Tallahatchie County were Black, the pool of prospective jurors contained only white men because Tallahatchie County had no Black registered voters. Chatham knew in advance that the jury would be all white, but he hoped that he could convince the jurors that race wasn’t an issue in the trial. As far as he was concerned, murder was murder; the race of the killers and the victim was irrelevant. In addressing all the prospective jurors, he stressed that the state wanted a fair and impartial jury and asked them to put aside “any prejudice because the defendants are members of the white race and the deceased was a member of the colored race.”

Interviewing and selecting jurors took all day, and the audience watched restlessly while lawyers carefully questioned jury candidates. Even with the case stacked in their favor, the defense attorneys relied on input from Sheriff Strider, who knew almost everyone in the county, to select men who would be friendly to their cause. Strider’s recommendations and J. J. Breland’s questions helped his team select jurors who would play along with the defense’s approach to the trial. Breland identified jurors who would be sympathetic to Bryant and Milam by asking “Will you be sure beyond a reasonable doubt that the dead body found in the river was Emmett Till?”

The prosecution’s questions took a different approach. Chatham and Smith asked candidates if they were racially prejudiced, if they were personal friends of Bryant or Milam, or if they had contributed to the defense fund. Many candidates were disqualified by their answers or by challenges from the defense, but after interviewing more than fifty men, both sides finally agreed on twelve men and one alternate for the jury. Court adjourned at 4:30 Monday afternoon, and spectators filed out of the stuffy, crowded courtroom anxious to return for the next day’s action.

Tuesday’s trial highlight was the entrance of Emmett’s mother, accompanied by Charles C. Diggs, Jr., one of the few Blacks in the United States Congress at the time. The crowd turned quiet as Mamie Till Bradley entered the courtroom and was seated at the Black press table in the rear. Deputies blocked Representative Diggs from entering, and when he identified himself as a member of Congress who had received permission from Judge Swango to attend the trial, one deputy couldn’t believe what he had heard. “A nigger congressman?” he exclaimed. “Hell, that ain’t even legal.” Eventually Diggs was searched and allowed to enter. Not long after Mrs. Bradley was seated, Sheriff Strider pushed his way through the crowd and handed her a subpoena to testify in the trial. She accepted it without speaking.

The courtroom audience, which had swelled to almost four hundred people on Tuesday morning, was disappointed when Chatham asked the judge for a recess to allow him and his assistants to search for and question potential witnesses that Medgar Evers and other NAACP workers had been trying to locate. Chatham’s request and the overcrowded courtroom conditions prompted Judge Swango to recess court until Wednesday morning. Bryant and Milam’s lawyers, confident of victory no matter what evidence or testimony the prosecution presented, were frustrated by what they considered Chatham’s stalling tactics.

Chatham, like everyone else in Mississippi, knew the defense’s plan relied on creating reasonable doubt about the identity of the killers and the body. He hoped that eyewitness testimony might be so irrefutable that even a white, racist jury would have to vote to convict Bryant and Milam of murder. Various sources in the Delta had reported to Chatham that at least two Black men, Leroy “Too Tight” Collins and Henry Lee Loggins, may have been witnesses to the murder and that other people would be able to testify that they had seen these men with Emmett Till after the kidnapping or with Bryant and Milam on the morning of the murder. A newspaper article reported on the potential witnesses, but unfortunately for the prosecution, these men were never found. (Unbeknownst to Chatham’s team, shortly after the murder indictment against Bryant and Milam, Sheriff Strider had had Collins and Loggins locked up in the Charleston jail under false identities; they remained there until after the trial.)

Chatham’s assistants were finally able to locate three new witnesses who agreed to appear in court. Several other Black farm workers who had been interviewed by Medgar Evers and his assistants may have provided important testimony against Bryant and Milam, but they refused to show up at the trial because they feared for their lives. All of them knew that testifying against a white man would ruin—or end—their lives in the Delta.